3D chess from Star Trek

In a number of Star Trek episodes, Kirk and Spock can be seen playing a three dimensional
chess variant together. Being three-dimensional and unusual in design, it leaves the impression that it is a game requiring even greater skill and intelligence than Chess. The board consisted of three 4x4 layers and four more 2x2 areas for a total of 64 squares, the same number as there are in Chess. The pieces they used were designed by Peter Ganine, who is known for various Chess piece designs. The particular design used in Star Trek is called Classic, and it should not be confused with Gothic (a.k.a. Superba), which shows faces, or Conqueror, which are figurine. The Classic pieces are a futuristic variation of the Staunton design. Perhaps because of their association with Star Trek, they have become the rarest and most collectible of all the Peter Ganine designs. You may search ebay for ganine classic chess, but you will rarely find a set. However, Star Trek tridimensional sets are available with a different piece set. You can find these on ebay by searching for star trek chess or for tridimensional chess.

The set used in Star Trek was a prop with no particular rules behind it. After instructions for making the board were published in the Starfleet Technical Reference Manual in 1976, Star Trek fan Andrew Bartmess was excited about this but also disappointed that no rules were provided for the game. So he wrote to the book's author, Franz Joseph Schnaubelt, who encouraged him to develop rules for the game himself. So, he did, and he has been selling printed manuals of the game from his own website. Although he has not published the whole rules online, he has provided a page with a partial description of the game.

Bartmess is by no means the only person to devise rules for playing a game with the equipment seen in Star Trek. Charlie Roth has a revision of the Bartmess rules on a page called Star Trek 3-D Chess Rules, Jens Meder has a site describing rules to Three-Dimensional Chess, and this site includes the following variants by Larry Lynn Smith:

In the early 1990's, James Dixon (1947 - 2010), an extreme Star Trek fan who according to secondhand hearsay from an unknown source, allegedly had a breakdown and eventually died after the 2009 Star Trek reboot came out, posted his own description of the rules to a newsgroup. It is presently unclear whether this was a description of the rules published by Bartmess or Dixon's own rules for the game. Dixon's description, reworded by site founder Hans Bodlaender, follows. Note that Bartmess has updated his rules since this time, and whether or not it was supposed to be Bartmess's rules, it will not be up-to-date with the current rules.

General information

The three dimensional board consists of seven different levels. Three
of these have size four by four, and have a fixed position; the four others
have size two by two and can be moved by the players. The position of the
fixed levels looks like a staircase: each next level starts above the third
row of the previous level, while the other sides of all fixed levels are
parallel. The movable levels find themselves initially above the outermost
corners of the upper and lower level; i.e., one of its corner has a corner
of the board below it, while the other three corners have no fixed level
board below it.

When the movable levels go to a different spot, they will always be
above or below a corner of a fixed level, with three squares extending
from the level. Note that always black squares are above and below black
squares, and white squares are above and below white squares.

side view with fixed and movable levels

Starting position

The position of the pieces when the game starts is depicted below; the
board is `flattened' for ease of display.

Movable levels

Each of the movable levels can be above or below any corner of one of
the three fixed levels.

Hence, there can be a movable level below and above the same corner.

Players may, when it is their turn, either move a movable level (under
some restrictions), or move a piece.

Moving movable levels

A player can move a movable level when one of the following conditions
is fulfilled (and of course, the move doesn't leave him in check):

He moves an empty movable level.

He moves a movable level which contains one of his pawns and no other
pieces.

When he moves a movable level, there are the following choices, provided
the movable level is not moved to a position already taken by another
movable level:

The level is moved to the other side of the same corner of a fixed
board, i.e., when the level is below a corner, it may be moved to the position
above the corner, or vice versa. For such a move, the board should be empty.

The level is moved to a corner that is adjacent on the same board,
and on the same side; i.e., if the level is above the upper-left corner
of a fixed board, it may be moved to above the down-left or upper-right
corners of the board.

The level is moved to an `adjacent' corner of the next board. When
the level is above a fixed board, it can be moved to below the same corner
of the next higher fixed board. For such a move, the board should be empty.

Movement of Pieces

Movement of pieces is similar to that of orthodox chess, but there are
two additional rules. First, when we look to the board from above, the
piece should be able to make a normal chess move to the square he wants
to go to. Secondly, each step taken, the piece can go up or down one or
more levels; where going up or down a level always means going from a movable
level to a fixed level or vice versa. (Think of it as follows: fixed levels
have heights 2, 4 and 6. Movable levels can have heights 1, 3, 5, or 7.)
These are the only two additional conditions.

Thus, it is possible that a piece moves over another piece: see the
diagram above.

General notes

James Dixon wrote about the game:

One will notice that when playing 3D chess it will take a considerable
amount of time just to move to the neutral level(the fx-lvls are referred
to as the white, neutral, and black levels -- the lower, middle, and upper
respectively), in fact longer for black(can the reader guess why?). But
after that phase of the game is reached, the game can become very complex,
very quickly. After a few games one can see how 3D chess can improve starship
tactics and inspire three-dimensional thinking (Khan's deficiency and undoing).

Written by Hans Bodlaender. Materials based on texts of
Andrew Bartmess and James Dixon. With thanks to C. Hallock, for spotting
an error. New Introduction by Fergus Duniho.

WWW page created: 1995 or 1996. Last modified: Nov 1, 2000.
﻿

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Comments

Clear explanations, excellent site with all the information I required.
Congratulations and thank you.
I think I have spotted one minor error.
I think that there is an error with the last diagram which shows the moves:
The path of the lower white castle should go over the far to squares of the movable/attach board, not the nearest two as shown.
Many thanks,
Norman

nice page & links ... but I just wanted to let you know that your diagram for the 'Starting positions' is incorrect, the K & Q need to exchange places with the K's and begin the game on the attack boards ( King & Queen's levels)

One problem with the Star Trek Tri-D chess game is that, essentially, all
it was really was a clever visual prop. Wah Chang crafted a piece of
artwork which allowed the actors to simply move the pieces about without
actually knowing how chess is played and without the audience really
catching on, even amateur or inexperienced players of the real game, since
you can assume a different rule set works. Hobbyists have attempted to fit
rule systems into what was seen on the TV series, which included the small
2x2 boards being moved around. But all this is actually unnecessary if you
a) forget about moving the small castle-boards and b) consider the board as
a coordinate system.
In the episode 'Charlie X' when Mr. Spock attempts to explain to Charlie
Evans that the basic principles of chess are mathematical, I realised that
this applies to the algebraic notation used to define the chess space and
the whole picture of a rational Tri-D chess game fell into place for me.
Try this: the small castle boards remain fixed at the corners of the upper
and lower boards, permanently. Their grids are identified as AB12, AB78,
GH12 and GH78 respectively. The home boards have the grids CDEF1234 and
CDEF5678. It's the middle board, the 'neutral field board' as it's
called in the Franz Joseph technical manual, which bridges the four small
'castle boards'. It's coordinate grid would be ABGH3456.
This makes the challenge of the game a matter of tracking the coordinates
of the squares of the various boards in combination and understanding that
it distributes the traditional orthogonal chess space into a
multidimensional packet. The players must be aware of where the moves for
the pieces require a shifting between boards and how attack lanes proceed
across and through this distribution. Psychologically, it would model the
viewpoint of a spacefaring culture which has developed faster-than-light
propulsion and the techniques for navigating in three and four dimensional
space. No special rules for play are necessary, only the capacity to think
in mathematical terms across multiple dimensions (the boards).

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No computers!
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